Thursday, January 22, 2009

Webster Tarpley, American Historian and Author, gives an analysis of the War On Terror exposing the manipulations, lies and obvious Geo-Political strategy behind the whole of this manufactured edifice.

The lessons of history make it very clear why a regime which planned and executed such attacks should not be left in power - think "Reichstag Fire" and you'd be on the right track.

Iceland has no army, no navy and no air force - but it does have riot police.

On Tuesday night the black-uniformed troopers came out to quell the latest riots in Reykjavik, which erupted in front of parliament. The building was splattered with paint and yoghurt, the crowd yelled and banged pans, shot fireworks and flares at the windows and lit a fire in front of the main door.

Yesterday the protesters gathered again, hurling eggs at the car of Geir Haarde, the Prime Minister, and banging cans on its roof.

The transformation of the placid island into a community of seething anger - there have been half a dozen riots in recent weeks - is more than a regional oddity.

In Riga last week 10,000 protesters laid siege to the Latvian parliament; yesterday hundreds of Bulgarians rallied to demand that the Socialist-led Government should take action or step down, in a second week of demonstrations, and last month the police shooting of a 15-year-old Greek boy led to days of running battles in the streets of Athens and Salonika.

The protests went beyond the usual angry reflexes of societies braced for recession. The Greek riots heralded sympathetic actions across the world, from Moscow to Madrid, and in Berlin the Greek Consulate was briefly stormed. The Riga unrest spread rapidly to Lithuania. It is, some say, just the beginning: 2009 could become another 1968 - a new age of rebellion.

The LSE economist Robert Wade addressed about 1,000 Icelanders recently at a protest meeting in a Reykjavik cinema, warning that large-scale civil unrest was on the way. The tipping point, he said, would be this spring.

“It will be caused by the rise of general awareness throughout Europe, America and Asia that hundreds and millions of people in rich and poor countries are experiencing rapidly falling consumption standards; that the crisis is getting worse, not better, and that it has escaped the control of public authorities, national and international,” he said.

The global liquidity emergency became a full-blown crash so quickly that there was no time to hold governments to account. Now leaders all over Europe have declared themselves to be the saviours of the economy and are nationalising assets, extending loans and guarantees to failing banks and manufacturers. But the price is high: unemployment is starting to soar and cuts in public spending are hurting hospitals, schools and universities. Personal bankruptcies are at record levels.

Every segment of society has been hit, but it is the young who feel the pain most - and just as in 1968, it is they who are leading the rebellion.

Many of the Greek farmers are reported to have been drunk. Their group was accompanied by teams from three Greek TV channels.

The farmers advanced with 15 tractors through the bridge on the Bistritsa River close to Kulata. They were met immediately by the Bulgarian border police, and told them they wanted to enter into Bulgaria as part of their ongoing protests against falling commodity prices.

The Bulgarian border police swiftly created a barricade of portable crash barriers, and managed to stop the invasion. Additional border policy units were sent to the spot, and the Greek farmers were explained that in order to enter Bulgaria, they first had to go through the Greek border crossing point at Promahon, and then through the Kulata checkpoint.

The Greek farmers retreated at about 2:20 am. There had been no clashes between them and the Bulgarian border guards.

At about 2:50 Bulgarian border police officers met with the Director of the Police Directorate in the Greek town of Seres Brigade General N. Rizos, who assured them all measures would be taken to prevent the same from happening again.

Civil unrest is spreading in eastern Europe as the economic crisis hits the region harder than western states, with anti-government riots kicking off in Lithuania and Bulgaria in recent days and with Estonia and Hungary at risk.

On Friday (16 January), demonstrators attacked the Lithuanian parliament building in Vilnius with stones, smoke bombs, eggs and ice, breaking windows and calling on the government to resign.

Police dispersed the crowds - estimated to number some 7,000 according to authorities, with tear gas and rubber-tipped bullets - while Prime Minister Andrius Kubilius to hold called an emergency cabinet meeting. A total of 86 individuals were arrested.

Organised by the Lithuanian Trade Union Confederation, the protest denounced public sector wage cuts and increases in taxes aimed at aiding the country's battered economy.

The violent protests come two days after similar events shook Sofia, the capital of Bulgaria, and follows on from riots protesting International Monetary Fund (IMF)-agreed austerity measures in Latvia earlier in the week.

In Sofia last Wednesday some 2,000 students, farmers and green activists also took up stones, snowballs and bottles against their parliament building and demanded the government resign. A total of 150 were arrested and around 30 injured.

Last week also saw saw the biggest protest Latvia has witnessed since the demonstrations that led to the country's independence from the Soviet Union in 1990. A crowd of young people broke away from around 10,000 peaceful protesters, overturning a police van and breaking windows at the finance ministry.

[ ... ]

Greek inspiration

But Latvian officials dismiss the idea that the protests are anything other than citizens frustrated at the collapse of their economies.

"It was just spontaneous," Inese Allika, Latvian diplomat, told the EUobserver. "Latvians are normally very quiet, and people obviously are seeing what is happening in other countries in the rest of Europe, such as Greece, and they thought 'Why are we so calm?'"

"There had been a huge economic boom in recent years, then all of a sudden, everything stops." ~ more... ~

Despite their appointment with the Rural Development minister, farmers continue blocking the Athens-Thessaloniki national road, Egnatia and the border stations, cutting Greece into two.After the meeting, Mr Hatzigakis said that decisions on the amounts to be given for crucial products would be made in the coming days.

Greek farmers have blocked several main links along the national road network. Thessaly, Macedonia and Crete farmers protest against low prices of farm products and high production cost.

Transport is cut in four places along the Athens-Thessaloniki national road, in Tembi, Nikaia near Larissa, Mikrothires in Magnisia, Castro in Boiotia and Alamana in Fhtiotida.

Links to Promahona and Exohi customs stations on Greek-Bulgarian borders are also cut while farmers have seized Heraklio airport leading to cancellation of many flights.

The meeting between Rural Development Minister Sotiris Hatzigakis and Thessaly farmers has reached a deadlock. The farmers stated they would continue with their struggles and ask to meet with the Finance minister and the prime minister if the Rural Development Ministry does not come up with solutions.

From his side, Mr Hatzigakis described many of the farmers' demands just, adding that the government would find a solution within the framework of the EU's fiscal policy and its rules. Farmers from Crete failed to be present due to the adverse weather conditions.

Meanwhile, farmers continue to remain in several parts of the national road. Producers from Fthiotida, Viotia, Serres and Kavala refused to attend the meeting, demanding from the ministry to make its positions clear before any dialogue commences.

Despite their appointment with the Rural Development minister, farmers continue blocking the Athens-Thessaloniki national road, Egnatia and the border stations, cutting Greece into two.After the meeting, Mr Hatzigakis said that decisions on the amounts to be given for crucial products would be made in the coming days.

Moreover, he reported that out of the 28 billion euros given to banks, rural economy would receive its respective part. This means that loans will be given to rural industries. Once more, Mr Hatzigakis stressed that he is open for dialogue.

Billionaire investor Warren Buffett commented on the US financial crisis that “it's only when the tide goes out that you learn who's been swimming naked, and Wall Street now looks like a nudist beach.” Well when it comes to Ireland, the receding tide of the global economy has revealed that not only were our business and political elites swimming naked, they were engaged in a great big orgy as well. They enthusiastically built up the property pyramid and pumped a vast quantity of hot air into the great debt-bubble, while enriching themselves through dodgy loans, dodgy planning decisions and every variety of backhander known to humanity. Probably one of the most sickening things about the boom was the way that the corporate media was full of hymns of praise to the entrepreneurial skills of our great leaders.

Well the bubble eventually burst, as do all bubbles, and it is now clear that the only legacy that our glorious leaders have left us from the Celtic Tiger is a ruined economy and lots of abandoned property. Unfortunately, however, it is not the great and the good who will be paying to tidy up the mess, it's you and me, the ordinary worker. We will pay in terms of cuts in the services the state provides us, downward pressure on our wages and benefits and most of all, the increasing possibility of finding ourselves unemployed against our wishes.

In 2008, the unemployment rate almost doubled, rising to 7.8% by November, with 277,200 people on the dole. Most of the job losses in 2008 came in the construction industry. The bad news is that 2009 will see the job losses in construction continue and spread to the rest of the real economy.

This is because our genius free-market entrepreneurs came up with a brilliant new business model based on what they called 'leverage'. Basically, this meant that it was more profitable to build businesses with borrowed money than it was to do so through capital investment, all thanks to the fact that the bankers' chums in government wrote the tax laws so that borrowings could be written off.

With the collapse of the credit bubble, many companies now find themselves in enormous debt that they can't pay back and will be forced to undergo huge downsizing or even bankruptcy, meaning lots more people out of work and facing serious hardship, especially considering the legacy of huge mortgage and credit card debt from the boom years. ~ more... ~

Yep. And it's only getting worse. After last night, even some of us here are asking "What does GREECE have to do with it?"

It's a good question, and it strikes at the heart of modern liberalism: Why the hell can't radicals protest JUST ONE THING at a time?

The inability causes real damage to their issues (all of them): The anti-war movement never took off in much of the country precisely because many Americans (myself included), who would have been happy to march against the war per se, were not interested in marching about the war/Israel/racism/school reform/death penalty/free trade/Free Mumia!

We stayed home, and didn't try to hold our own rallies because we knew that those people would show up and accuse us of not being anti-war enough because we eat meat.

The radicals respond (though not in an organized fashion) that all of these issues are interrelated: That the systemic dynamics of oppression manifest in multiple ways and that it's this fundamental dynamic that must be opposed all at once - in Palestine, in Greece, in San Francisco, and everywhere else.

The result is the creation of what I've called the "liberal ur-issue," wherein everything we don't like is seen to be exactly equivalent of, or even identical to, everything else we don't like. It's all one thing.

I formulated the concept at an activist meeting where California's agriculture policies were compared to: The war in Iraq, No Child Left Behind, apartheid, global warming, and (of course) Nazi war atrocities.

It's true that there are large-scale system dynamics at work, but this attitude becomes a problem when you use it to turn people off of the fight for marriage equality just because they don't believe Proposition 8 is as bad as Hitler.

One of President Barack Obama's first acts Tuesday was to put the brakes on all pending regulations that the Bush administration tried to push through in its waning days.

The order went out shortly after Obama was inaugurated president, in a memorandum signed by new White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel.

Former President George W. Bush's administration moved into overdrive in the last year or so on a host of new regulatory proposals. Now the Obama administration will review everything that is still pending.

In doing so, the Obama administration is taking a page out of Bush's playbook from 2001.

Until now, solar power has been a daytime-only energy source, because storing extra solar energy for later use is prohibitively expensive and grossly inefficient. With today's announcement, MIT researchers have hit upon a simple, inexpensive, highly efficient process for storing solar energy.

Requiring nothing but abundant, non-toxic natural materials, this discovery could unlock the most potent, carbon-free energy source of all: the sun. "This is the nirvana of what we've been talking about for years," said MIT's Daniel Nocera, the Henry Dreyfus Professor of Energy at MIT and senior author of a paper describing the work in the July 31 issue of Science. "Solar power has always been a limited, far-off solution. Now we can seriously think about solar power as unlimited and soon."

Inspired by the photosynthesis performed by plants, Nocera and Matthew Kanan, a postdoctoral fellow in Nocera's lab, have developed an unprecedented process that will allow the sun's energy to be used to split water into hydrogen and oxygen gases. Later, the oxygen and hydrogen may be recombined inside a fuel cell, creating carbon-free electricity to power your house or your electric car, day or night.

The key component in Nocera and Kanan's new process is a new catalyst that produces oxygen gas from water; another catalyst produces valuable hydrogen gas. The new catalyst consists of cobalt metal, phosphate and an electrode, placed in water. When electricity -- whether from a photovoltaic cell, a wind turbine or any other source -- runs through the electrode, the cobalt and phosphate form a thin film on the electrode, and oxygen gas is produced.

Combined with another catalyst, such as platinum, that can produce hydrogen gas from water, the system can duplicate the water splitting reaction that occurs during photosynthesis.

The new catalyst works at room temperature, in neutral pH water, and it's easy to set up, Nocera said. "That's why I know this is going to work. It's so easy to implement," he said.

Article 51 of the UN Charter provides that UN members have the inherent right of individual or collective self-defence if an armed attack occurs. The question then is, what is an armed attack?

To the non-specialist, the word “armed attack” might signify any attack. But under international law the issue is not so straightforward. If, for example, it were the case that a single shot fired across a border amounted to an armed attack for the purposes of Article 51 of the UN Charter then states could invoke their “inherent” right to self-defence and go to war. This could cause endless instability in international affairs. It could also lead to accidental wars. One has only to think of the tensions between India and Pakistan, China and Taiwan, North and South Korea, Greece and Turkey, Russia and Georgia to realise the danger. Moreover, if the threshold for an armed attack is low then states could effectively manufacture a war. All they would need to do is provoke a border incident, allege that they had been attacked first, and then send in the troops.

In the Nicaragua case the International Court of Justice drew a distinction between the “scale and effects” of a particular military operation that could be classified as an armed attack as opposed to “a mere frontier incident.” An armed attack carried out by “armed bands, groups, irregulars or mercenaries” the Court said, would have to be “of such gravity as to amount to an actual armed attack conducted by regular forces.” The Court's jurisprudence in Nicaragua was upheld in the case concerning Oil Platforms where it said that in ascertaining whether an armed attack had taken place it was necessary to distinguish “the most grave forms of the use of force from other less grave forms.” Even cumulative attacks, the Court said, might not necessarily amount to an armed attack for the purposes of Article 51 of the UN Charter.

As regards the Israel-Palestine conflict we are not dealing with a single shot fired across a border. We are faced with a decades-old territorial dispute. Assuming that the right of self-defence for the purpose of Article 51 of the UN Charter can apply to attacks initiated by non-state actors like Hamas, are the rockets fired by its military wing into southern Israel of such a “scale and effect” that they amount to an armed attack as opposed to a border incident? And are they of “such gravity” that they amount to an armed attack conducted by a regular army? If so, how is one to quantify rockets attacks for the purposes of an armed attack? By the numbers fired? Or by the number of deaths they cause? Does a rocket fired into an open field or into an empty building amount to an armed attack? What if it causes damage or injures or kills someone?

A new £33m machine purchased to calculate how climate change will affect Britain, has a giant carbon footprint of its own

For the Met Office the forecast is considerable embarrassment. It has spent £33m on a new supercomputer to calculate how climate change will affect Britain – only to find the new machine has a giant carbon footprint of its own.

“The new supercomputer, which will become operational later this year, will emit 14,400 tonnes of CO2 a year,” said Dave Britton, the Met Office's chief press officer. This is equivalent to the CO2 emitted by 2,400 homes – generating an average of six tonnes each a year.

The Met Office recently published some of its most drastic predictions for future climate change. It warned: “If no action is taken to curb global warming temperatures are likely to rise by 5.5ºC and could rise as much as 7ºC above pre-industrial levels by 2100. Early and rapid reductions in CO2 emissions are required to avoid significant impacts of climate change.”

However, when it came to buying a new supercomputer, the Met Office decided not to heed its own warnings. The ironic problem was that it needed the extra computing power to improve the accuracy of its own climate predictions as well as its short-term weather forecasting. The machine will also improve its ability to predict extreme events such as fierce localised storms, cloudbursts and so on.

"...This is a clip from the legendary Shea Stadium Concert that broke The Beatles ticket sales record. A record that still stands today (37 years later). I'm proud to say this video is in the permanent archives of Shea Stadium & The N.Y. Mets. Yes, this is the real deal, the Grand Funk Railroad we all love at the peak of their great career. Grand Funk Railroad is America's Band. This is a historic concert that folks still rave about. If you were there, feel lucky, because you were a part of history. This is considered by many to be one of the greatest concerts in the short history of "Hard Rock/Metal". Grand Funk Railroad was truly a "Performance Vehicle". It is amazing that this record has stood this long, a testament to how great & influincial this band was in the early 1970's. Check out the link below to see what Mark Farner has to say today about this historic performance. Grand Funk Railroad ruled the world from '69-'76 becoming the first band to earn 10 consecutive platinum albums! Some call it "Industrial Rock". You'll see no lazers or pyro here, just some of the greatest music ever performed live. Shea Stadium suffered structural damage after this show. In fact, the concert was almost stopped because Shea Stadium was oscillating from the excited crowd..."

To many the perception is clear: nearly every facet of our political, government, and legislative bodies in our country are seemingly corrupted, or serve as little more than commercial representatives prioritizing the needs of their underlying contributors. Many politicians have furthermore been hand placed, not due to their work ethic, or objective capability for cooperative advancement of a random goal, but for their specific known field of vision and reliability to move in an expressed direction on a relative topic.

Our government still very much resembles a throw back to the days of frontier discovery, whereby land tycoons and development groups would groom, finance and place their selected “Yes Man” on the basis of a singular vote or lobbying movement. All these years later, and the best we can still seem to do is pave the way for rampant fraud, criminal corporate activities, deregulation for profiteering, and some of the largest wealth transfer schemes perpetuated in the history of our globe.

It would be nice if the next phase of our country's transition could embrace a higher ideology than just capital contribution rates. Our new foundation should read: any public servant, by nature of the importance and significance of their action and activities, and the dire consequences that can befall a great number of people through abuse of these privileges, will subject themselves to be held to a higher level of accountability.

It seems very clear that our leaders, expressed generally as politicians, can cause fairly significant damage when using their influence and legislative powers to pave the way for change that opens doorways to deceit and decadence. To be further compensated for it – openly or otherwise - only makes it worse. We can only hope that one day history looks back and laughs kindly at the irony of government officials in modern age initiating and voting on platforms that actually prevent their open disclosure requirements on corporate contributions and the platforms for which they serve.

Maybe anyone that continues to serve in public office past 2009 can take a new oath?

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Roots

Revelation 13

And I stood upon the sand of the sea, and saw a beast rise up out of the sea, having seven heads and ten horns, and upon his horns ten crowns, and upon his heads the name of blasphemy...

...And they worshipped the dragon which gave power unto the beast: and they worshipped the beast, saying, Who is like unto the beast? who is able to make war with him?...

Mark 13

And when ye shall hear of wars and rumours of wars, be ye not troubled: for such things must needs be; but the end shall not be yet. For nation shall rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom: and there shall be earthquakes in divers places, and there shall be famines and troubles: these are the beginnings of sorrows.